Prototype for python?

Question

I just learned Prototype for Javascript, it's super convenient, use the $ expanding, access the xml elements is not painful any more!

Just wondering if there is any extension like Prototype existed in Python space?

Answer 1

Python has lxml which has the xpath method wherein you could use xpath expressions to select elements. As I understand it, $ in prototype searches and returns an element that has a particular id, in which case could be translated in xpath to *[@id=<someid>] like so:

>>> import lxml.etree
>>> tree = lxml.etree.XML("<root><a id='1'/><b id='2'/></root>")
>>> tree.xpath("*[@id=1]")
[<Element a at c3bc30>]
>>> lxml.etree.tostring(tree.xpath("*[@id=1]")[0])
'<a id="1"/>'

I think the Python standard library includes support for a subset of xpath in ElementTree too so you might be able to implement that there somehow if you do not wish to install lxml (which isn't included in stdlib)...